Review All That Fall

All That Fall

By Samuel Beckett

The Path Of Life

https://artstheatrewestend.co.uk/

Sitting in a blindfold  - both artistically correct and in accordance with the wishes of Samuel Beckett's estate -  during this production of All That Fall, an unoriginal  thought struck TLT and her conveyance of choice.

"That Sam Beckett can't half write!"

We don't mean the character of Quantum Leap fame, but the real Samuel Beckett, playwright, novelist and not a bad cricketer either (well, it gave him and Harold Pinter something to talk about - in between pauses;)).

All That Fall, an hour-long 1956 radio play set in rural Ireland, is such a beautifully structured, rhythmic piece of pure audio, technically brilliantly paced. 

And what is more, what  comes through joyously in this production transferred to the Arts Theatre from the more cavernous Wilton's Music Hall, is the total delight in it for director (Max Stafford-Clark), actors, the sound person (Dyfan Jones)  - and of course the listeners .

Not discounting naturally the silences,  for as the central character Mrs Maddy Rooney (Brid Brennan) says  at one point with simple eloquence: "Do not imagine, because I am silent, that I am not present and alive to all that is going on'

And there is such a lot going on. From the start we are immersed in the heightened noise of farmyard animals and footsteps. Driven by sound as much, if not more than, words, the play charts the Saturday journey to the railway station, there and back, on foot  of elderly arthritic Mrs  Rooney. 

She is out to surprise her blind husband Dan (Adrian Dunbar, currently Superintendent Ted Hastings in TV series Line Of Duty)  on his birthday, returning  from work.

And the "never tranquil" Mrs Rooney and her acquaintances move around us as we sit in darkness,  bringing with them their soundscape, the climbs and descents, the slowing downs and the quickenings, the advances and the retreats.

Along the way German lieder music on a gramophone drifts out of a house across the lane and Mrs Rooney meets familiar folk. The dung carrier (Frank Laverty), an elderly cyclist (Dunbar again, although you wouldn't know it!), an admirer from times gone by, the race course clerk (Ciaran McIntyre) with his own little cramped jalopy,  Mr Barrell, the stationmaster (Frank Laverty doubling up, but you wouldn't know it ..) and the pious Miss Fitt (Tara Flynn).

Meanwhile Mrs Rooney's mind drifts back to past family tragedy.  She finds Dan and they walk home, managing to laugh despite finding no place to rest, "There is no bench ... There is no bank". As Mrs and Mr Rooney make their way home  they also encounter two children Jerry (Tara Flynn) and Tommy (Killian Burke) as the June weather changes for the worse, But not before we are all drawn into a mysterious railway death of a child.

This seated auditory blind man's buff reaches its peak when we are surrounded by the crescendo huff, puff and hiss of steam as the train draws into the station. For all the world,  as if the flickering Lumière Brothers' famous film of a locomotive drawing into a station had come to life around us

It's a delicate piece teetering into tragedy by way of laughter and lunacy  with, like James Joyce's Ulysses,  a steely backbone of trade and business. The title is obviously a  quote from the psalms. Yet surely Joyce's final work Finnegans Wake also starts with The fall bababadalgharaghtakmminarronn...)? (third paragraph) 

But enough of literary criticism, real or imagined!  It's enough that this piece dramatically managed to evoke a characterful literary history while making us laugh, sometimes ruefully, and provided a completely different, but very three-dimensional theatrical radiophonic experience.A green light.

Review Darknet

Darknet

By Rosie Lewenstein 

Living The (Virtual) Dream 
www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

There's a marvellous quote in the publicity of Rosie Lewenstein's unicorn drama Darknet: 

 "You’re not even a fully formed person yet. Your face is still changing and your bones are still growing but already there’s a detailed map of your personality out there ..." 

Somewhere out there, there's a monstrous spawn of data embryos being farmed, literally millions of little corporate bodies with the most slender but tenacious of umblical cords attached to the wallets of all citizens from birth. And we are all uncertain, soft-boned unformed adolescents in this man-made commercially-driven virtual universe. 

The sprawling, scattergun 140 minute play though doesn't live up to the promise of the incisive hook-in, lacking the rigour to follow through fully its implications and the wit to make us to make us catch our breath and re-examine our fetters to this interconnected, cross-referenced cybersphere.

The "real" Darknet, for the uninitiated, is the deep web, an anonymous, uncensored space hidden by encryption. Misused by criminals to sell drugs, weapons and child abuse images. But also a conduit of free expression for human rights' activists, dissidents and journalists seeking to expose corruption. 

Darknet the play is a busy production with frames,  video screens and ipad puppetry, although with scene changes directed with some fluidity by Russell Bender. 

Eventually all the characters in this piece do interconnect, curated into a transatlantic parallel courtroom scene but too often thought-provoking analysis is cut short. Still, there are glimpses of potentially interesting characters and fascinating situations if the play were heavily pruned.  

Jim English catches distinctively something of the public perception of hacker Gary McKinnon and leaves a strong impression as lanky, intense teen bedroom hacker Jamie with Robin Berry as his harassed Dad.  

Ella McLoughlin has a persuasive sweetness and confusion as adolescent Kyla who turns out to have the dubious honour of having a computer virus named after her. 

Despite a conventional webcam sex trade story, Greer Dale-Foulkes' Candy also manages to connect touchingly with the audience, as well as Gyuri Sarossy's evangelical US tech company executive Allen. 

But, among other weaknesses, the script fails to develop Allen's central role and allows him little leeway as more than a tool for entry into the world of home technology gone rogue, mental breakdown and a very, very questionable (well, actually, plain wrong - see Myth #5)  conclusion about data dumped in the "public domain". 

Naveed Khan fares better with the sharper-scripted Asian boss John, in contrast with his other thinner role of jailed veteran hacker Gary. 

There are a few acute one-liners to match the publicity quote - the male simulcrum (Robin Berry again) who lets his master know "I am programmed to be a feminist". Also some hints of programmed phrases and computer studio set ups. And there's a brave attempt to fuse form and content.  

There's the initial auspicious premise of unicorn start up's Octopus Inc advertising blurb of pseudo-empowerment: "The more you share, the more you earn.. you're rolling in data!" set against Kyla's Mum Stacey (Rosie Thomson), trying to wean herself off heroin, but worried how her online Octopus id and rating might be affected.  

But these are over-powered by a curiously dated feel to the storylines. TLT and her tech savvy hatchback were sometimes reminded of the 1995 movie Hackers,  with Darknet's East European storyline and  name-and-shame perversion of the game show seeming also like well-worn themes. And the new technology comic set scenes even managed to remind TLT of 1960s' sketch show Rowan & Martin's Laugh In joke wall!

So there may still be space for a play about how far copyright of our data souls should be a human right and not corporate property. In the meantime, Darknet is more stimulating than chatting to a chatbot but it only just slips into an amber light.

Review My Mother Said I Never Should

We at Trafficlighttheatregoer Towers are pleased to welcome Francis Beckett, author, journalist, playwright, contemporary historian - and now guest reviewer on trafficlighttheatregoer.com :) Find out more about the newest addition to our team at http://www.francisbeckett.co.uk/

My Mother Said I Never Should

By Charlotte Keatley

A Woman's Century

http://www.stjamestheatre.co.uk/

Four generations of women, the eldest a baby before the First World War and the youngest starting life almost three-quarters of a century later. Each does the best she can for her daughter and herself  - within the limitations imposed on them by the society into which they are born.

This beautifully-observed and carefully-researched piece records, without comment, the decisions they make. Decisions which sometimes appear incomprehensible only a few years later, yet at the time they seem like the only responsible paths to follow.

Despite earnest attempts in the programme to bill My Mother Said I Never Should as a worthy feminist piece, the play, set in Manchester, Oldham and London, is far more interesting. As much an account of a changing yet still cruel society by a woman playwright who understands that inequality and unfairness, while certainly penalizing and punishing women, punishes men too.

Written more than 30 years ago in 1985 when Charlotte Keatley was just 25, it still comes alive as if fresh-minted with the magnificent performances at the St James Theatre in Victoria.

There’s the always wonderful Maureen Lipman as Doris – no one in the world does a cantankerous mother better. Alongside her, Katie Brayben as granddaughter Jackie, Caroline Faber as Jackie's mother Margaret and Serena Manteghi's great granddaughter Rosie. All young performers who match Lipman's presence and professionalism.

It’s a testing play for actors who must age purely physically, as any gap is too short to allow for the application of make up. Yet the audience easily recognizes when, for example, Katie Brayben's Jackie is four, 14 or 40 years old before she even opens her mouth.

It may not be a perfect play, nor for that matter a perfect production. At the start, director Paul Robinson introduces some abstruse movement and stamping of feet which made me fear that the evening was going to sink under the weight of mysterious symbolism. 

Occasionally the odd line is a little too deliberately trying to be a tearjerker – “You’ll never call me Mummy,” cries Jackie as she hands over her baby.

But at these moments, the production always manages to recover its equilibrium quickly and this absorbing, sometimes very funny, evening in the theatre easily earns a green light.